Vacant Ark

[undamned]

Both Enhasa and Pixel_Outlaw have mentioned this game:
http://indygamer.blogspot.com/2006/04/vacant-ark.html

I thought it should get some more publicity. Fired it up after work today and it's a beauty! Why can't people make games like this for the Dreamcast [ducks a pie]?
-ud

[MathU]

I've mentioned this before and noone seemed to care. Pretty unique game, and very fun. I just wish I could customize the controls.

[Udderdude]

Pretty unique game

Thur's yer problem right thur.

Kidding. Will download and give it a shot.

Edit: I tried it for a bit. Definitely nice sprites. Wasn't too big on the actual game .. I appreciate that they tried to do something different with the shooting mechanics but I was terrible at it. I think most of the bosses self-destructed .. and when they did, they just vanished into nothing. o_o

Also I felt I was lucky if the bosses had more than one shot pattern the entire fight. Seeing as they were so long, since you spend so much time reloading your ammo .. it could have been more interesting with different patterns.

Also the way the ammo cubes go flying off away from your ship is just annoying. Why can't they just go straight towards you? I had to bust my ass just to collect them. Eugh.

Thumbs up for the graphics and music, though.

[Necronom]

This has been briefly mentioned in the Iwanaga thread over at the off topic section months ago. And yeah, it looks and plays beautiful...just like Iwanaga

[elfhentaifan]

Interesting score system with nice graphics and music.
Still a bit too monotone for me

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Thanks for the link undamned,

Will have to give a spin to see what the ol' PC can do with doujin games... ^_~

Too bad that the DC homebrew shmup of Drill wasn't finished...I wonder what happened to it?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Enhasa]

This game is awesome, but it's awesome in atmosphere more than gameplay. To really think well of this game, you ought to see the final stage. That being said, I really like the unique mechanics (well, the Sonic thing with your life is unique to shmups AFAIK), but they're actually too simplistic if anything. Once you figure out basic strategy, the levels are simple enough that there's never a question of what to do at any time.

If you want a shoe-ish review, it would be like:
OMG MELEE WTF
OMG SLOW BULLETZ ZZZ
OMG 2 EZ ZZZ

Edit: I tried it for a bit. Definitely nice sprites. Wasn't too big on the actual game .. I appreciate that they tried to do something different with the shooting mechanics but I was terrible at it. I think most of the bosses self-destructed .. and when they did, they just vanished into nothing. o_o

Also I felt I was lucky if the bosses had more than one shot pattern the entire fight. Seeing as they were so long, since you spend so much time reloading your ammo .. it could have been more interesting with different patterns.

Also the way the ammo cubes go flying off away from your ship is just annoying. Why can't they just go straight towards you? I had to bust my ass just to collect them. Eugh.

Thumbs up for the graphics and music, though.

Ok, you would enjoy this game a lot more if you actually knew how to play it correctly. The bosses shouldn't be timing out. Your pods and melee attack (when you have no bullets) do damage, and you can always get more bullets easily with your pod (and not run out by hitting stuff when you have bullets already).

Bosses aren't long at all and if you spend a lot of time reloading your ammo, you're not doing it right.

Also I wish the ammo collecting was as you described. My biggest complaint with the game is actually that it is not, since I like to move around instead of just sitting there. Just switch weapons, and they will get sucked in automatically.

[Udderdude]

Bosses aren't long at all and if you spend a lot of time reloading your ammo, you're not doing it right.

Also I wish the ammo collecting was as you described. My biggest complaint with the game is actually that it is not, since I like to move around instead of just sitting there. Just switch weapons, and they will get sucked in automatically.

I am teh suck at shmups that break the mold ..

Maybe I'll give it another try later.

[ssfsx17]

The game is basically about thinking of the "best" strategy for every area, and seeing how close you can get to the boss' weakpoints without getting hit.

Anyone here ever find a good use for the Riot shot? I haven't yet had a boss fight where it was better than Cannon.

[MathU]

The riot shot isn't very useful on bosses, but it works well on many smaller enemies.

[iatneH]

Major dead thread bump, but I started playing this recently, yet more recently I installed Windows 7 and now this game no longer works, some kind of DirectDraw error. Has anybody gotten this to work?

I guess it's not a huge deal since I have like 5 computers, so if there really is no workaround then I can just run it off one of my mobile computers...

Also, anybody found it's not really playing friendly with Joy2Key? Tried it with a Genius Minipad Pro & MadCatz Xbox360 Fightpad, I set J2K to map a button to Z and another to X, but in-game they are both acting as Z? Or is it just my pads?

[MathU]

I haven't been able to get this to display properly ever since I got a new monitor. It's always mashed vertically. Same for Iwanaga.

[iatneH]

By some crazy investigation I managed to get this to work on my new Windows 7 notebook.

First I tried running it in W7's XP mode, but I still got a DirectDraw error. I ran dxdiag within the XP virtual machine and it said v.9.0c was installed, which was the same as my other real XP machine which could run the game. So, I checked the VirtualPC's screen resolution and it was a bit weird at 960x600.

I quit VirtualPC and went back to W7, and resized my desktop to 800x600, and now the game runs! Joy and love! I'm going to try this with Iwanaga... if somebody still has the archive. I cannot find it at the official site.

It could be that the game has some trouble resizing wide aspect ratio displays, since my W7 desktop was connected to a 1920x1080 monitor and this notebook is 1366x768.

edit: fix does not seem to work for everyone... sorry if I got the hopes up..!
Also, the game does not run at full speed for the first 20 or 30 seconds but it is OK by the time the 3rd wave of enemies appears.

edit2: in fact, it's not working on my Win7 desktop either. What a heck. Nevermind... I got all excited for (almost) nothing.

edit3: ...now this is getting very weird. I can now run the fullscreen versions of both Vacant Ark and Iwanaga on my notebook without changing my resolution first, even though I am absolutely positive Vacant Ark was giving me DirectDraw errors earlier in the day. I can't think of what it could possibly be...

[Enhasa]

I'm so glad you're doing this, because while I'm not playing Buster's games right now, I've heard that they don't work well in newer Windows (even XP for some). So I really appreciate if you figure out how to run these in 7.


His old site is here. The links still all work except for the fullscreen Iwanaga. However, his new site is here. He has a new game, which seems like it links to ASCII/Enterbrain's Indie Game Maker page. Makes sense since his first two games were in Shooter Maker. Anyway I'm gonna try it out.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Incompatability issues with my old games is the main reason im gonna sick with 32bit XP for as long as I can. And then ill probably have to set my PC up to be a dual boot. Which I can imagine is gonna be a pain in the arse to set.

In a perfect world Microsoft would make their operating systems 100% backwards compatable but then the software houses wont sell hardly any new updates of their applications. Since many ppl including me are happy with most of software they have now and only upgrade when forced to.

[gct]

I have gotten rid of a number of my computers, and have not made XP partitions for my new machines.

I am still having problems running this game in Windows 7, but I figure in a worst case I can try running the windowed version in conjunction with Windows 7 Magnifier.

However.... I lost my zip file for the windowed version, and I cannot find it available to download anywhere? Can a kind member please point me to a download, or zip up his own directory?

I would make a new XP partition on a spare hard drive but somehow nLite isn't being friendly with my AHCI drivers and my system bluescreens every time I go through the XP installer.

edit: found a little app called D3D Windower, lets you run full screen applications in a window. Works for this game, but there is still a weird thing with the game running really slowly during until the first boss appears.

[MathU]

Vacant Ark v1.02

This is the second time I've uploaded one of Buster's games for someone here. I wish he would get another website up to host his games. It's a crime that they're no longer easy to find on the internet. Definitely top notch freeware.

[AttObl]

After playing it for a few minutes, I would like to say it's a pretty good game, but the ammo system is bugging me quite a bit, even though you can get them easily by changing weapons. However, the shield is most likely going to be my favorite weapon, since you can absorb the bullets for ammo and damage the bosses (The second level's boss comes to mind). The cannon is a good weapon for bosses, but I prefer the Force weapon, even though you risk taking damage from colliding with enemies.

Come to think of it, I need to download Iwanaga (Buster made Vacant Ark and Iwanaga.) once again...

[MathU]

Iwanaga download

Buster had one other game on his site if I remember right, but it was sort of like a tech demo and wasn't really a full game. Sadly, I never held onto it.

[gct]

Thanks MathU, but is this the windowed version? The one which used to be hosted at the official site as "vacantark_wi.zip" and runs in a little tiny 320x240 window..

At any rate, thanks for hosting, on behalf of the other members. This can still work well with D3D Windower, so maybe it's not necessary to have the windowed version anymore.

[MathU]

They're both fullscreen versions. I don't remember there being any separate windowed versions. Sorry, I don't have those if they existed.